CSUN Satellite Pares 10 Classes

Officials with the Ventura satellite campus of Cal State Northridge say looming budget cuts have forced them to drop 10 classes and to shelve a two-year graduate program.

More than 20 prospective students received letters last week informing them that the school has scrubbed its master’s program in educational counseling for next year, said Joyce Kennedy, the school’s director. Along with the letter, each student received back the $55 admission fee.

The belt-tightening move at the Ventura satellite facility was one of the first responses to planned 8% budget cuts in the state university system that Kennedy said may be the largest in the history of higher education.

James W. Cleary, president of the parent campus in Northridge, announced Wednesday that the school plans to lay off 532 of its 556 part-time instructors and 176 management and staff employees.

Those cuts will filter down to the Ventura campus, where administrators would have to replace part-time instructors with more highly paid, full-time professors, Kennedy said. That, in turn, would limit the number of instructors that the Ventura campus could hire, she said. The Ventura campus has the equivalent of 23 1/2 full-time teaching positions.

“The cuts could have terrible ramifications for our school,” Kennedy said. “If there are significant layoffs at Northridge, that will significantly affect us here.”

Kennedy said she has already prepared a budget with an 11.5% cut that would avoid layoffs in non-teaching jobs at the Ventura campus. “But if the cuts turn out to be more than the 11.5% under discussion, all bets are off,” Kennedy said.

As part of the planned cutback, the school will drop 10 of its 120 courses to reduce the faculty payroll, which accounts for 56% of the school’s $1.3-million budget, she said.

The reduced budget also eliminates dollars needed to buy new instructional equipment and library materials, she said.

The cutback, prompted by the state’s continuing fiscal woes, follows an 8.5% drop in the Ventura campus’s budget last year, Kennedy said. To meet the previous cut, administrators dropped 10 classes from both the fall and spring semesters, reduced the library’s hours and closed the campus on Saturdays.

Until three years ago, CSUN officials had planned for the Ventura campus to grow by an average of 150 students a year. Recently, the growth target was reduced to 80, then 40, and now may not be projected to grow at all, Kennedy said.

With the uncertainty created by the budget crisis, Kennedy said, tension has increased among campus personnel.

“Many of my colleagues are feeling demoralized by the situation,” said Stephanie Pirola of Ventura, a part-time instructor who teaches two courses at the Ventura campus.

Pirola added that she expects to receive a layoff notice. “Every time I go to my mailbox, I anticipate receiving the notice,” she said.

Some of the 10 non-teaching employees at the Ventura campus have voluntarily accepted part-time assignments to save jobs.

Linda McKenzie of Oxnard, a budget assistant and minority recruiter, has agreed to a one-third reduction in her workweek, hopeful that her sacrifice ultimately will help save her job.

“If it came down to a situation where there would be no minority recruiting, that would devastate me,” she said. “By working part time, I can at least go to sleep at night knowing that I’ve done something.”

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